Most Americans don't understand why the president isn't elected by popular vote. But the electoral system protects small states like Iowa.

While Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren dipped a toe in Iowa’s swirling presidential waters last week, some of her House counterparts were working to make sure Iowa is totally overlooked in 2020.

Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., started the new year with a bang by introducing a bill to eliminate the electoral college — the constitutional body responsible for electing the president of the United States. Disgruntled Democrats have maintained a beef with the college since 2000, when George W. Bush won the presidency while losing the popular vote, but attacks on the institution reached a fever pitch after a similar circumstance saw President Donald Trump lose the popular vote by 2.87 million but still win the White House, on a 304-227 electoral vote.

As with most times people engage in reactionary politics, nobody is thinking about the long-term.

The electoral college has few defenders, mostly because average Americans know little to nothing about it.

A 2009 survey showed that 43 percent of Americans didn’t have any idea what it is, and a Rasmussen poll from last October showed that those opposed to the electoral college are less likely to know what it actually does.

And that’s a shame, because what the electoral college does is actually really important to maintaining constitutional checks and balances, and even more important to small, lower-population states like Iowa.

Many Americans are familiar with the three branches of the federal government, and understand that the branches are to act as a check against each other. Fewer are aware of the pivotal role states have always played in balancing that power. So few, in fact, that federal government has become synonymous with national government — which was not the intent of its creators.

Our constitutional system was intended to balance the sometimes disparate interests of a collection of states, as well as to keep more powerful states from trampling on the weaker, less populous ones. One such protection was a bicameral legislature, one to represent the states, and the other the people. Another was state election of senators, which was regrettably removed with ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913. And another was the electoral college, created in part to make sure that a select few powerful and populous states did not retain a perpetual stranglehold on Washington D.C.

The electoral college — and our broader federal system — was built on the idea that state borders matter, and that there are substantial differences in the values, needs, and priorities of Iowa and Massachusetts. Without it, many states practically disappear from the political map.

NEWSLETTERS

Get the Register Opinion newsletter delivered to your inbox

We're sorry, but something went wrong

A sneak preview of the newest editorials, columns and opinions from The Des Moines Register.

Fully half of the U.S. population now lives in in the nine most populous states. If you break it down further and look at counties, half of the population lives in only 4.6 percent of counties nationwide.

Simply put, without the electoral college, there’s no reason for a presidential candidate to care about Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada, Alabama, or any other low-population state in the general election. Consequently, once elected, they will feel little pressure to address the concerns of “flyover country," whether relating to agriculture, industry, or infrastructure.

The beauty of the electoral college, like bicameral representation, is that it balances state identity against population. More populous states have greater representation due to their population, but smaller states are able to join together and punch above their weight, ensuring that they aren’t ignored by Washington, D.C.

That matters a lot when it comes to federal policies that disproportionately affect those smaller states. Rule changes related to farming, wetlands, ethanol, and more could be decided by presidents that only ever get elected by Californians, Texans, and New Yorkers.

The move to abolish the electoral college is part of a broader assault on federalism that includes suggestions to eliminate states completely. Such suggestions stand in opposition to the new Millennial majority working to move the world in a more decentralized, object-oriented direction through technology — and that’s a key point of entry for fans of small government.

If ignorance of (and disdain for) the electoral college is allowed to persist, the political will to abolish it will eventually break the Constitutional dam — and the identity and interests of small states like Iowa could be quickly washed away in the deluge.

Joel Kurtinitis(Photo: Special to the Register)

Joel Kurtinitis of Des Moines is a homeschooler, conservative-libertarian writer and millennial political activist, who contributes regular columns to the Register. Follow Joel on Facebook at facebook.com/jkurtinitis or on Twitter @Joel_Kurtinitis.